Atlanta Braves Morning Chop: arbitration, J.T. Realmuto, O’Brien chat

DOB’s Chat Session

Braves’ beat writer and song aficionado David O’Brien is now writing for TheAthletic, and he held a Q&A chat session on Tuesday for subscribers.  I decided to participate – with emphasis added:

"Q from Me:  How tough has it been in getting information/rumors/insight out of the Anthopoulos front office as compared to prior administrations? A from DOB:  @Alan C.  Alex keeps things extremely close to the vest, not unlike John Schuerholz back in the day, or Dave Dombrowski when I covered the Marlins and he was their GM. But as long as a GM doesn’t play favorites, or doesn’t leak things to national guys like some GMs I’ve dealt with, I don’t have any problem with him not disclosing info. Long as he’s fair and doesn’t leak stuff to people who don’t even cover the team on a regular basis, I don’t have a problem with him working quietly and not sharing info for public use. We get enough from Alex off the record to have an idea about how the team is approaching things, enough to have a pretty good feel for what they might do and why — or at least a lot better grasp of it than those unaware of those off-the-record conversations might think."

That ‘unaware’ group probably includes yours truly, but that’s primarily since we’ve heard precious little even from our ‘usual sources’ (DOB, Mark Bowman, etc.) during this off-season.

“Off the record” does mean exactly that, though we would have hoped for some hint of a direction over these past couple of months.

That’s why I latched onto the info given to Ken Rosenthal and parsed it to death yesterday (hmmm… wasn’t that a ‘leak to a national guy’?).

One thing we watch for here – specifically – is when writers like O’Brien talk around certain topics or discuss ‘players like _____’ or suggest directions the club might be going toward.

Such phrasing generally comes from such off-the-record chats that they will have with the Front Office.  Unfortunately for us, it is that info we’ve been looking for and not really seeing a lot of.

Back to the Budget

However, this answer to a separate question was noteworthy (emphasis added):

"Q from Will M.:  Is it safe to say that the Braves window really opens in 2020 with 2019 being a year for competing while not going all in? A from DOB:  @Will M. I’m going to refrain from speculating about when they’ll go “all in,” since I thought this winter would be the time to do that after winning the division. At least “all in” as far as bumping the payroll significantly. But they’re not going to do that. It might rise, but not by any significant amount. And that surprises me. I know the Battery hasn’t been the rousing success they probably hoped, but I don’t understand why they can’t bump the payroll up to $140 million after winning the division in their second year at a new ballpark, where they’ve drawn increased attendance each of their two seasons there."

Now this dovetails with my interpretive post from yesterday.  While I am sticking with the theme from there (that the Braves and other ‘buyer’ teams think prices of all kinds are too high), this does perhaps suggest that there is a double reason for inactivity this off-season:  those prices and the desire to hold back on expenditures of all kinds.

And yes, that was a bit eye-opening.

So as for free agents?

• No on Keuchel
• No on Pollock

How about trade targets?  Even though you acquire these players in exchange for prospects, you have to pay them, too.  Here’s the arbitration estimates for those trade targets that have been mentioned most often.

• Nick Castellanos:  $10 million
• Realmuto:  $6-ish million

DOB even had a trade suggestion of his own:

"(Answer to @Max M). … Arizona still seems like a decent possibility of a match, if the D-backs decide to go deeper towards rebuilding. They could take care of a couple of Braves needs in one deal if Atlanta could swing a trade for, say, lefty Robbie Ray and OF David Peralta."

• Peralta $7.7m; Ray $6.1m

He also suggested that Julio Teheran could be moved without a lot of trouble (Hello, Houston?  Angels?) if some additional cash was needed.

That could become necessary.  Many of us are still holding out hope for that.